The big news for me is that I became a Grandma. Welcome to Aleta Marie.

I wanted to pass on this Holiday greeting from our friend and fellow woodcarver, Anom and his family.

Grapes and Leaves Graduate Martha did a stunning job. She has already started her second project, an ash mallet. The difference between the woods is like night and day. Basswood is soft and almost creamy in texture when cut with sharp tools. The ash is a ring porous wood that is tough and stringy.

Every year Doug has been carving his wife a three dimensional wood Christmas card. This year it was influenced by their vacation to Japan.

Robyn is finally happy with her Bear carving. It took a couple of tries and she was not smiling when she first started carving the bear in what turned out to be a rather punky piece of sugar pine. After ditching the pine she got some Redwood which, although hard to carve, turned out really great. The Redwood had pretty open growth rings and was dry so she is on coat # 12 of Watco and he is still sucking it up.

Good Job Amelia! The raised letters on this complicated character were extremely difficult to carve.

Amelia's little sister Katherina joined us and carved a fish and then added the most glorious colors.

Sarah came to get some help with her woodcarving. She is an artist and taught herself to carve. She has a great eye and is totally fearless but was frustrated with some of her results. We worked together and she got through most of the steps of the Grapes and Leaves project. I was so pleased that she felt like she learned a lot from the project. Hopefully she will get to join us again but it is a long trip from Alaska.

Maize is starting her third project. This one is a Book Box. The cover and spine are out of Butternut and the "pages" are out of Basswood. The pieces are all cut and there is a rather complicated series of steps to glue all the pieces together. Some pieces have glue and some don't in order for the box to work. Thank goodness Maize is a bright and attentive woodcarver because she caught me right before I was going to glue the wrong piece.

Randall finished his dog portrait out of Cypress. The grain does a nice thing over the back and haunches.

This was a repair job I did last month. The carving was from Brazil and a piece broke off and they didn't have the piece. The top left shows where the damage was and the piece missing. The top right shows the edge and the reason that it broke. The carving was from one piece of wood and the light area was the sap wood. The sapwood had beetle damage. From the surface there was only a couple of tiny holes but the edge shows the channels that the bugs chewed. That was probably the reason the piece broke there. The bottom two pictures show the repair. I used butternut to try and match the color and texture of the wood, although it is softer than the original wood. The patch and seam show on the back but I was able to match the design and wood burning pretty closely on the front. I am hoping that with aging the color will get more yellow and darker and will be even closer than it is now. Conor finished another tiny critter. Carved, painted and wood burned basswood.